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China is also the land of the knock-off: knock-off designer handbags, knock-off blockbuster movies on DVDs, etc. But now, it seems the knock-off has gone off the charts in terms of proportion: entire buildings.

The Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid unveiled her designs (left in the picture above) for the Wangjing Soho complex in Beijing in 2011. It's now under construction.

But a building that looks a lot like Hadid's is going up in the city of Chongqing, and it may actually be finished first.

Avi Friedman is a professor of architecture at McGill University in Montreal.

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